Sisila ila ila
Sisila ila ila: saying goodbye is a musical poem composed by Shih-Hui Chen evoking a sense of longing for worlds that have been lost— or those in the process of being lost. It follows the thoughtful meanderings of an inquisitive viola as the sound of an ice cream truck sparks her childhood memories, which come flooding back. The forgotten voice of an indigenous singer, a 1960’s Taiwanese pop song, moments from a Beethoven quartet rehearsal, music of the humpback whales... Her reminiscences come to life with imagery developed with seventh-generation shadow puppet masters from the Tung-Hua Puppet Theater.
This new work represents a fresh kind of theater that transports us, visually and musically — as if in a dream—to other worlds, calling upon us all to listen to one another, embrace shared experiences of life, and dissolve misperceptions of separateness.
“It’s not an exaggeration to say that Chen stands with a veritable dream team on this project, in particular director Doug Fitch, violist Hsin-Yun Huang and clarinetist David Rothenberg (who is also a noted author whose most recent book is the very applicable Whale Music: Thousand Mile Songs in a Sea of Sound.) The charming Huang serves as an endlessly expressive guide through the piece, conveying the Viola’s ruminative moments as clearly as if she were speaking to us.”
From Hsin-Yun:
Sisila ila ila is like a dream, transporting us to another world, calling us to listen to each other, to be in harmony with the environment, with the whales. You will be blown away by the symphony of whales. That’s the heart of the project, where we are deeply immersed by their beautiful sounds. There has never been another project in my life where I feel so incredibly inspired. Thanks to David Rothenberg, our nature expert, I now want to lead students to listen to birds, to bugs, to the whales. We have a responsibility in inspiring the next generations to listen better.
Listen to Sisila ila ila:
Sisila ila ila is about:
Longing for worlds that have been lost - or those we are losing.
Preservation and conservation.
rebelling against expectations of oneself and others to discover one’s authentic self.
Finding a story that owns the profound loss of devastation, while shaping a future with hope.
The lost and found self - how easy it is to lose ourselves in a complicated present and how we can find ourselves by connecting the fact of our past with all the possibilities of a future.
How we have disconnected from the very nature that brought us into existence, and whose very existence we threated by ignoring it. Remembering that we are a subset of nature and not the other way around.
How the indigenous Saisayat people - with their language and arts - become a metaphor for the disappearance of cultures everywhere in an inevitable human convergence toward sameness.
The endangered artistry of shadow puppetry.
All that is endangered in our age of extinction.
How a single song can humanize and thus save a whole species, as it did for the humpback whales - demonstrating the universal (even inter-speciel) nature of art.
The viola as an instrument “between” the high and low stings as a deep-listening shaman, conencting disparate melodies and bringing harmony from within.
How our infatuation with technology has subsumed our curoisity and instict.
About saying goodbye to childhood.
Behind the Scenes:
“[Sisila ila ila] offers a prescription of sorts in the power of remembering what is gone and honoring its memory, of opening yourself up to nature to situate yourself within the bigger picture, and letting the union of these elements in the present nourish you for the future.”